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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2010 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/washingtonlincolOObrad 



Ila0l|tn9t0n an& ©nrnln 



This edition is limited to five hundred copies^ of 
which the first fifty copies are bound in cloth ^ and the 
remaining four hundred and fifty copies in paper. 

All copies have been numbered and signed by the 
author. 




This copy is No.^./...^ X^ 



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llaBl|tn0t0tt anb Utnrnln 



A Comparison, a Contrast and a Consequence 



An Address Delivered on June 18, 1904 



at 



aUe:g 3f0riget 'Penittx* 



Before the Pennsylvania Society of 
Sons of the Revolution 



To Commemorate the Abandonment of the Camp by the 
Continental Ariiiy in 1778 



By 
The Rev. Cyrus Townsend Brady, Lh,D. 




Published by the Society 

1904 



1. 



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PRISS OF 

tTbc 5obn G. Wlliwton Co. 

PHILADELPHIA 



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Respectfully dedicated 

TO 

jfrancis \)on HlbaOe Cabeen 

WITH THE SINCERE ADMIRATION 
AND ESTEEM OF THE AUTHOR. 



A Qlomjiartson. a (Enntrast nnh a (Hanstvintntt, 



Gentlemen and Comrades, Sons of the Revolution. 

Deeply sensible of the privileges of the opportunity you have 
afforded me, I undertake the discharge of its obligations with a 
seriousness of intent and an earnestness of purpose which I trust 
will win me the consideration accorded to honest endeavor. 

Rare, indeed, is it that any man whose station is merely that of 
a private citizen of our Republic is permitted to address so dis- 
tinguished an assemblage, amid such historic surroundings, on so 
happy an occasion. And profoundly do I appreciate the honor. 
Without further preliminary save this assurance, therefore, I 
enter upon my pleasant task. 

Nations are like men. They begin, they end, and between their 
limits are comprised the seven ages. Their span is longer than 
that of the individual, but short enough in the sight of Him to 
whom a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past. 

The United States of America was conceived at Lexington, 
quickened at Bunker Hill and born at Philadelphia It was bap- 
tized in blood and snow at Trenton. It spoke stern words from 
the cannon mouth at Saratoga. It struggled desperately for life 
amid the cold at Valley Forge. It struck boldly for victory at 
Guilford Courthouse and the Cowpens. It finally assumed the 
toga virilis of independence at Yorktown. 

Youngest among nations centuries old it had to run the gamut 
of experience thereafter. It grew by leaps and bounds until its 
confines were measured by the Atlantic and the Pacific, the Great 
Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi from a boundary 

(9) 



lo Washington and Lincoln 

became a bisector. Its position was assured by the death grapple 
at Lundy's Lane; on the decks of the frigate Constitution; behind 
the cotton bales and sugar barrels at New Orleans. Thereafter 
it was fain to sow its wild oats ; consequently it behaved badly 
in '46 and '47 in Mexico. Lastly, it stood upon its feet and 
fought successfully for its very existence in '61 and '65, in the 
longest, the most costly and the most terrible of modern wars. 

To-da)% before the wondering nations, it faces the future with 
a confidence, an assurance, begot of the past. Yet no one may 
say what the years may bring to it, or what it may bring to the 
years, in the days that are to come. 

History is usually but the record of events. The chronicler 
goes from crisis to crisis. The story of a people is epitomized 
in the lives of its great men. The mind leaps in succession from 
figure to figure. Yet this is but half of history. Great men are 
the products of their time, crises the culminating points of slow- 
moving persistent forces ; as the water swells inward from the 
sea in long undulations scarcely noticed until the crest of the 
wave breaks, flashes into sudden foam and is gone. 

With a full consciousness of this mighty, determinatiA^e under- 
current, it is yet difficult to disassociate history from the crisis 
and from the men who dominated it, or failed. It is the white 
cap that catches the eye when the heaving of the deep passes 
unnoticed. It is the light that shines in the darkness that dis- 
closes the nature of the surrovmding midnight. This is the use 
of the study of crisis and man ; by it we are led to deeper things 
hidden from superficial glance. 

Disregarding for this argument the greater fields of literature, 
art and science, with no disparagement of their importance — 
God forbid ! — we confine our attention to men of affairs. 

Among the ancient Hebrews stand Moses the Law-giver and 
Paul the Saint. Rise in our minds at the name of Greece, 
Pericles, chief of her statesmen ; Alexander, greatest apostle of 
her progress ; Leonidas, high exemplar of her courage. Rome with 
her two thousand years of history recalls Caesar, typifying her 
ambition ; Brutus, her patriotism ; Augustus, her empery. Charle- 
magne, the unifier ; Richelieu, the statesman ; Napoleon, the law- 
giver, appear for France ; Frederick, creator of the kingdom. 



A Contrast and a|Consequence ii 

Bismarck, founder of the empire, for Germany; Czar Peter and 
Empress Catharine for Russia ; Gregory the Seventh, that Hilde- 
brand of Canossa, for Italy ; Charles V. and Christopher Colum- 
bus for Spain. Nearer our own, we bare our brows before that 
stern ironside, Cromwell, and that sailor of sailors. Nelson, for 
England. We bow lowest of all in homage to the greatest patriot, 
the noblest character of the first sixteen centuries of our era, 
William the Silent, of storm-beaten Netherlands. 

Then we turn to America. The men we have enumerated are 
those that have stamped themselves upon five thousand years of 
history. It might be unfair to expect that in one century and a 
quarter the new nation could produce any fit for inclusion in that 
brilliant category. Yet it has done so. My mind dwells to-day 
upon two names, which can never be disregarded by any who 
strive to enumerate the small score of the world's supreme — 
George Washington and Abraham Lincoln ! 

It has been the fashion among those who have been privileged 
to address you upon successive commemorations on this historic 
field, to dwell upon the local happenings, the history of events. 
The account of the ragged, destitute, hungry men at Valley Forge, 
freezing, bleeding in the snow, yet holding on, has been repeated 
many times and oft. And well it may be; for such a story of 
deathless heroism it is difficult to parallel in the annals of nations. 
The men of Valley Forge can never be too highly praised, their 
heroism too largely dwelt upon. Here they overcame victory. 
Here they defeated defeat. Here they founded an heritage for, 
and gave an example to, succeeding generations. 

But I have deliberately chosen to fix my attention this morning 
rather upon the man than upon the men. And I have broadened 
the scope of my remarks. Valley Forge stands for the supreme 
struggle of the Revolution. The place is national, therefore. 
Nay, it is epochal in universal history. In my judgment the 
cause of American independence was settled here rather than on 
any other battlefield in the war. Surviving this winter its future 
might be delayed, but it was assured. For man here fought 
against nature. He had to oppose his feeble powers not to men 
who differed from him only in degree of strength or capacity, 
but to those immutable laws which bring the heat in summer and 



12 Washington and Lincoln 

the cold in winter, which produce the thirst pang and the hunger 
grip. Against these the highest human courage usually avails 
nothing. Before these man breaks and falters. So did not our 
forefathers in the snow. 

The ambition of Napoleon was finally buried on the ice-heaped 
plains of Muscovy ; the genius of liberty lived, it grew, it thrived 
at Valley Forge. Therefore, from the long roll at Lexington to 
the grounding arms at Yorktown, the supreme incident of the 
American Revolution is the winter at Valley Forge. 

Happy is that great commonwealth, Pennsylvania, keystone of 
the mighty federal arch, which includes within its borders such 
hallowed ground ; for, as I have said elsewhere and to this splen- 
did assemblage, no spot on earth — not the plains of Marathon, 
nor the passes of Sempach, nor the place of the Bastile, nor the 
dykes of Holland, nor the moors of England — is so sacred in 
the history of the struggle for human liberty as are the hills of 
Valley Forge. 

You will bear with me, I am sure, if I take a long leap through 
the years and call your attention to another fact which justly 
fills us as children of Pennsylvania with a double pride ; that 
within our borders is a second spot hallowed by the blood of men, 
of equal importance and of equal interest in our history and in 
the history of the world with this. That sacred field lies to the 
westward where rise the slopes of Gettysburg. 

At Valley Forge it was determined whether or not the Repub- 
lic should die in its childhood ; at Gettysburg it was settled 
whether or not the Republic should exist in its manhood. As in 
the winter of '76 the opponents of liberty put forth their greatest 
efforts, seconded by the bitter circumstance of nature, to stifle 
the new idea, and failed ; so in '63 the Confederacy reached the 
"high topgallant" of its fortunes when brave Armistead fell before 
the Pennsylvania soldiers on Cemetery Ridge. There were five 
years of varying conflict after Valley Forge, and two years of 
bloody fighting after Gettysburg, but in both cases it was but the 
ebbing of a tide. 

The man who stands to us for the heroism at Valley Forge is 
George Washington ; the man who stands to us for the supreme 
event at Gettysburg is Abraham Lincoln. At first glance no two 



A Contrast and a Consequence 13 

men could be more dissimilar, yet the first is the cause of the 
second, the second the complement of the first. For to George 
Washington and Valley Forge are due Abraham Lincoln and 
Gettysburg. In history they can never be disassociated. This 
is a contrast, a comparison and a consequence. 

The struggle that has been going on in the world since the days 
primeval has been a struggle for human liberty. Viewed from 
the nearer point this fact has usually been uncomprehended. The 
baser passions of humanity, the ambition of kings, the love of 
women, the pride of potentates, the covetousness of states, aye, 
even the claims of religion, have precipitated wars ; and the results 
have often seemed in accord with such conceptions, methods and 
aims. But he who reads history aright — "that power charged 
with the promulgation of the judgment of God upon the pride of 
man" — will see that in the larger total throughout the ages things 
have worked together for good. Oftentimes the conqueror who 
has defied God's laws and ministered to his own ambition has 
been made, despite himself, the avatar of a new dispensation, the 
tyrant has brought liberty in his train. 

In every age there have lived men who were ahead of their times, 
who have nobly perished in an herculean effort to drag to some 
higher level the sluggish mass. And other men, sometimes lesser, 
sometimes greater, upon their failures have builded success. Rare 
indeed has there been a fortuitous concurrence of time and mass 
and man. 

One of the greatest of the liberators was Cromwell. He could 
strike down injustice, he could kill a tyrant, but he could not build 
a structure which would outlast his own personal influence. The 
passing of the Protector brought back that contemptible fribble 
Charles II. Brutus could remove Imperial Caesar, simply to make 
way for the more imperial Augustus. Alexander could bring a vast 
empire under his sway which fell to pieces by its own weight when 
his death, in a drunken brawl at thirty-three, relaxed the weld- 
ing hand. Napoleon could incarnate the spirit of the French Rev- 
olution — that thing of noble sentiment and atrocious deed — and, 
when opportunity and his genius put the world at his feet, could 
grasp at omnipotence until the mere human frame, unable to sus- 
tain such a divine attribute, gave way, and the man ate out his 
own heart, an exile at St. Helena. 



14 * Washington and Lincoln 

The greatest before our own nation gave the world assurance 
of a man was William of Orange, the Dutch patriot and statesman 
who stands next to Washington. See vis Tranquillus in Undis! 
Rarely has there ever been such a people, such a leader, such an 
opportunity and such a success as in the Netherlands. It is good 
for the world that he and they lived and wrought as they did. Yet 
to-day kings and queens reign in the country for whose independ- 
ence he fought alike the ravaging sea and the ravening Spaniard ! 

When what has been called the greatest document ever struck 
ofif at one time by human hand, the Declaration of Independence, 
was spread before the eyes of startled Europe ; in spite of the age- 
long struggle, human liberty — civic, political and religious liberty, 
that is — was in most countries a philosophic dream. Even that 
sturdy little Helvetian confederacy was under the domination of 
an oligarchy as narrow and as supreme as that which had swayed 
for a thousand years the destinies of Venice. There was liberty 
nowhere on the surface. There was a passion for it everywhere 
in human hearts. 

Then it pleased God to bring together in America such a group of 
men as few countries have ever assembled at one time within their 
borders. James Otis, John Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jef- 
ferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Robert Morris and 
Benjamin Franklin, to think and plan; Nathaniel Greene, Israel 
Putnam, Anthony Wayne, Daniel Morgan, John Stark, Francis 
Marion, John Paul Jones, Richard Montgomery, Harry Lee, 
Baron De Kalb, Marquis de Lafayette, and in his earlier career, 
Benedict Arnold, to do and dare ; and as the unifying spirit not 
only to direct, but also to lead, and thus to stand supreme among 
them all — George Washington. Providence also put a blundering 
fool upon a throne and surrounded him with venal counsellors and 
incompetent soldiers, to equalize the struggle of the few against 
the many. Thus the Revolution was fought and won. Thus 
the country was established. 

There is one significant feature of it. It was fought, won and 
established under the leadership and guidance I might say of an 
oligarchy, certainly of an aristocracy. We had no official aristoc- 
racy in the country, but unofficially there were well-established 
differences in rank even in democratic New England, where 



A Contrast and a Consequence 15 

students were placed in Harvard College in accordance with the 
social status of their fathers ! With few exceptions the soldiers and 
statesmen of the Revolution were, in the old-fashioned sense of the 
word, of the degree of gentlemen. They came from the best 
society of their day. True, they could have done nothing had 
there not been that fortuitous concurrence of ideas and the ideal 
as represented by the people and the few. True, they could have 
accomplished little had not the time been ripe for such leadership 
as they could offer; had not the idea of liberty been already 
inwrought in the minds of the people by the slow process of the 
ages. The understanding of this point is of great importance in 
tracing our future development. It was the aristocracy of the 
land to which was due the establishment of the government. 
Nor by this do I minimize the popular contribution to the work. 
That was necessary. Nothing could have been accomplished with- 
out the people. But without the leadership mentioned nothing 
could have been done by the people. They were not yet capable 
of evolving a leader themselves. 

There never was a kinglier man in any land, at any time, than 
George Washington. Wherever such a character might have 
appeared his career would have been a marked one. If he had 
not been born to the purple he would have achieved it. No 
man is independent of opportunity. For if, as Shakespeare says, 
its guilt is great, so also is its virtue; but if ever a man were 
independent of opportunity, it was George Washington. 

Such an assemblage of qualities as he exhibited has rarely, if 
ever, been seen before in a single man ; yet he was not a demigod. 
The blood burned in his veins as prodigally as it beats in our 
own. He was full of the joy of life. His passions were as strong 
as those of any man. But his character was remarkable for a 
purity, an honesty, a dignity, a sanity, a restraint, a self-control, an 
ability and a courage, at which succeeding ages have marveled. 
The testimony to his qualities is abundant and unimpeachable. In 
mind and mien he was more royal than the king. In my judg- 
ment, had he so desired, he might have been the founder of an 
empire and a dynasty, instead of the Father of a Republic. 

In the earlier history of the struggle for human liberty, we find 
that the successive steps were always taken upon the initiative of 



i6 ' Washington and Lincoln 

the great, the gently-born, the well-to-do. Hampden was of the 
rank of gentleman, as was Cromwell, although he is nearer to 
an exception to this statement than any other. The Barons of 
Runnymede wresting the Magna Charta were the high aris- 
tocracy of England, and the people without them would have had 
no power to move the ineffable John. The early leaders of the 
French Revolution — as Mirabeau ! — were of the same high class. 
Not for a long time did men like Marat and Barere come to the 
fore. The American Revolution was engineered and directed 
and assured, I reaffirm, by the aristocracy, the best blood of the 
country. 

What then ! Having achieved their task, Washington and his 
fellows deliberately put liberty and its maintenance into the hands 
of the people. In the very nature of things, by the very plans 
which they made, by the Constitution itself, the whole power, 
the authority of the government, the entire responsibility for its 
administration and for its preservation, were taken out of the 
hands of the few and put into the hands of the many. 

It is difficult to estimate the importance of that action. There 
was no precedent for it. Experience had no word to say con- 
cerning its feasibility. The boldness of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence was surpassed by the boldness of the Constitution. The 
one had stated that all men were created free and equal, that 
government derived its just powers from the consent of the gov- 
erned ; the other showed that men had the courage to stand by 
their assertions. Words are lacking to emphasize the sublime 
faith and the noble courage of the Constitution-makers — again the 
nation's best ! Coldly considered it was an experiment of such 
magnitude that we stand aghast even in backward contempla- 
tion of it. It might have been such a failure. 

It is probable that the experiment never would have succeeded 
if the transition had been sharp and abrupt between the customary 
and the proposed method of government. The habit of centuries 
was still strong in humanity. During the earlier years of the 
Republic the people, timid in their own powers, committed its 
destinies to the same class under whose leadership had been won 
its liberty. The earlier Congresses exhibited a degree of wealth, 
station and culture which no succeeding assemblage of legisla- 
tors has paralleled. 



A Contrast and a Consbquencb 17 

But the people learned rapidly and their work justified the 
trust reposed in them. Among themselves the genius for leader- 
ship grew and flourished. The first President who came from the 
people was Andrew Jackson. In character, in service, in ability, 
he stands midway between Washington and Lincoln, falling short 
of both, yet worthy of mention with either. What he might have 
been, given the opportunity of the other two, is a question which 
it were idle to discuss. No such crises ever confronted him in his 
career as Washington faced or as Lincoln dominated. The people 
had much to learn. Much in his career, as their representative, is 
the subject of merited censure; but the praise outweighs the 
blame. 

In the first ninety years of its history the Republic had demon- 
strated its right to existence. Its course, save for the blot on its 
escutcheon involved in the unjust war with Mexico, had been 
highly honorable among nations. It was not likely that any for- 
eign foe would ever be able to overwhelm it or impair the stability 
of its institutions. With a constantly increasing success had been 
demonstrated the feasibility of a government administered by, and 
for the benefit of, the people. The event had justified the wisdom 
of the founders. The world on every hand looked on and took 
lessons. And well it might. No single fact in history has been 
so pregnant with happiness and welfare to mankind as the demon- 
stration of democratic government which we have afforded. The 
consequences are not yet exhausted. 

The political course of the world's history since 1776 has not 
been backward. Some of us may live to see the day when Russia 
will become a representative government, when the absolutism of 
Germany will be an archaic fiction, and when kings will be by the 
grace of the people, if indeed they be at all. Some day all civilized 
nations, whatever their outward form of government, will be as 
free as we are, as England or as France are, to-day. 

For this the world may thank the United States and its makers. 

Now a country which may have strength enough to fight 
valiantly for its existence against external foes may yet carry 
within itself the seeds of its own destruction. In 1861 came the 
final trial as to whether or not the experiment that was begun by 
Washington was finally to come to an inglorious end. Without 



i8 Washington and Lincoln 

passion or prejudice, — certainly it is too late for that now — with- 
out any feeling for any section of our country but love and devo- 
tion, without going into the causes of the Civil War ; looking only 
to the fact that upon its success or failure depended the exist- 
ence of the United States, realizing that if one section could 
separate from the main body upon aggrievement, so also could 
another, and that one single separation probably meant the solu- 
tion of all organic coherence and the substitution of a number of 
jealous, circumscribed, petty and insignificant States for a great 
homogeneous nation, thus involving the utter downfall of the 
great idea of the founders of the Republic and of the Constitu- 
tion ; we can realize the importance of the conservation of the 
United States as a nation. 

This was second only — and perhaps I am not right in using 
the word second — to its establishment. The aristocracy of the 
country had founded a nation and had committed its government 
to the people. No longer did aristocracy dominate. No longer 
does it dominate to-day — I use the words in the old sense of 
degree ; in the long run the aristocracy of talent and character 
will always dominate in the Republic and elsewhere. Washington 
had done his part. Would the people be equal in the crisis to the 
obligations of their position? 

Who is responsible for the successful conduct of the war 
between the States ? To whom, under God, is due the perpetuation 
of the Republic? Many men took great part, many men deserve 
well of the nation. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Farragut and 
Meade ; Stanton, Sumner, Chase and Seward. Their services are 
as nothing compared to those of Abraham Lincoln, And he was 
a man of the people. In every sense of the word, mark it, a man 
of the people ! The people themselves had brought forth a man 
capable of leadership. Out of the dust of earth did God make 
this man in His own image. Washington opened the way for 
Lincoln, and Lincoln trod successfully upon the path. 

As Valley Forge brings up Washington, so Gettysburg brings 
up Lincoln. There was no battle, no clash of arms, at Valley 
Forge. It was a struggle on the part of Washington and his men 
for existence in a winter. Lincoln was not on the field of Gettys- 
burg when the war drum throbbed above it and the blood of 



A Contrast and a Consequence 19 

men was poured upon it ; but whoever mentions Gettysburg thinks 
of Lincoln, as whoever mentions Valley Forge thinks of Washing- 
ton. For Lincoln said things at Gettysburg of which the fight- 
ing was but the expression, and Washington did things at Valley 
Forge of which the Declaration of Independence was the record. 

Dissimilar I said these men were. Washington, born of the 
world's great; the richest, the best bred, the most important, the 
most influential man of his time. Lincoln, so humble, so obscure 
in his origin that it can with difficulty be traced. Washington, 
with every grace and charm and characteristic that marks the 
highbred gentleman ; Lincoln, with few or none of these things. 
One a prince, the other a peasant. 

It is idle to speculate as to which was the greater man. Both 
were necessary, both were complete, both did their allotted work 
absolutely. 

Washington's character is not complex. It is simple and easy 
to understand — and not the less great and admirable on that 
account. Be it remarked in passing, that he was no English coun- 
try gentleman, as has been alleged, but as good an American as 
Franklin or as Lincoln himself. 

Lincoln was a creature of contradictions. In person so homely 
as when pictured almost to repel, but with an appeal so powerful 
and inexplainable that in personal contact his ugliness was for- 
gotten. Perhaps men near him caught a glimpse of his soul, un- 
consciously revealed. A man full of that quaint humor we love 
to call American, yet over his face a tinge of sadness as if tragedy 
peeped from behind the mask of comedy. A man whose stories 
were frequently not repeatable, yet of a deeply religious nature, 
a piety as fervent as it was uncommon, a trust as pervading as it 
was sincere. An unlettered man, yet whose beautiful words will 
live as long as the language of Shakespeare and the English Bible 
shall endure. A man with many failings, who made many mis- 
takes ; a man with the stain of the soil whence he sprang clinging 
to him ; yet with qualities that enabled him to speak to his fellow 
men with the foresight of a prophet, to accomplish the impossible 
with the powers of a king, to pursue his duty with the serenity 
of a saint. 

As I look back upon our American history, as I view side by 



20 ' Washington and Lincoln 

side these two gigantic men towering among their contempo- 
raries, each ready in the day of need, I break forth in the words 
of the ancient prophet, "What hath God wrought?" The one to 
found and build a RepubHc, to give it a priceless heritage into a 
people's hands ; the other to rise in the crowded hour and say in 
the words of a greater than man, "I have finished the work which 
thou gavest me to do. . . . Those that thou gavest me I have 
kept and none of them is lost." 

Oh, flag that floats above us, thank God that from thy blazonry 
never hath been torn a single star! 

As I draw from both these Homeric men the outward seeming, 
they grow more like. I seem to discern an equal patience, an equal 
courage, an equal sanity, an equal abnegation of self, an equal 
desire for the welfare of their fellow men, an equal resolution that 
freedom shall have her opportunity here in the land they both 
loved so well. In God's great Valhalla where men meet face to 
face, each man known for what he is, I see the great noble and the 
great commoner with clasped hands — friends. One forever, in- 
separably joined. Named together on our diptychs of the dead 
who yet will never die. For it was "Washington who made Lin- 
coln. For it was Lincoln who assured Washington. 

Gentlemen, so much for the past. What of the future? Can 
we unlock it with the past's blood-rusted key? On the threshold 
of a new century stands the country of Washington and Lincoln. 
The United States is menaced by threatening conditions, con- 
fronted by difficult problems, weighted with grave responsibilities, 
external and internal. These are the circumstances of success. 
To struggle is to live. The law of battle is the law of life. Well 
might Alexander weep with no more worlds to conquer, for then 
began his decadence. The country whose need fails to engross its 
highest citizenship in its problems, in which the people do not 
cheerfully give their best consideration to its questions, is a coun- 
try already in a state of decay. Thank God for all our burdens ! 
By them we prove our manhood. 

For one hundred years we were content to expand peacefully 
within our natural limits. Between the seas we reigned supreme. 
In the twinkling of an eye we found ourselves projected, almost 
without intent, into the sphere of world politics. Not that we 



A Contrast and a Consequence 21 

were in a state of complete isolation before. As with individuals 
so with nations entire isolation is not possible ; as men live among 
men, so nations must live among nations, sustaining certain 
definite and well-understood relations with one another, whatever 
may be the individual desire to be solitary, alone. 

But our concerns with foreign powers and affairs had been 
remote and not of especial importance. 

To-day we have become a factor in the politics of the world. In 
the Chancellaries of Europe the leading question in nearly every 
contingency, — not purely local, — that arises is, "What will the 
United States do?" Our American diplomacy which has honesty 
for its finesse and truth for its subtilty — where neither has been 
in vogue — takes the lead in public questions. With neither army 
nor navy comparable in size to that of other nations, — although so 
far as they go unsurpassed — we are still the greatest single factor 
to be reckoned with. 

We have said to one-half the world, "This half is ours. Keep 
out of it!" Therefore, we have made ourselves responsible foi 
the welfare, the well-being and more especially the well-doing, 
of that of which we have assumed to be the warden. How are we 
discharging that trust? So as to retain the respect of older 
powers, on the one hand, and the affection of those newer nations 
of which we have assumed the guardianship on the other, or not? 

Our flag floats in the sunrise on one hemisphere in Porto Rice 
at the same hour that it is gilded by the sunset in the Philippines 
on the other. And the end is not yet. We are about to teat 
asunder the barrier which has separated ocean from ocean since 
God called the dry land from the deep. This is our position 
among the weak and the strong. What is to be the end of our 
expansion? Shall we go on? Shall we stand still? Shall we 
acquire? Shall we retain? 

Never in history did a nation say as we did to Cuba, "Go, you 
are free !" Shall we say that some day to our little brown breth- 
ren across the Pacific ? Shall we train and try them for that end ? 
Shall we grasp at power with greedy rapacious hands? Shall 
we give way to vaulting ambition which shall by and by o'erleap 
itself and carry us down in its fall ? That depends upon you, oh, 
Sons of the Revolution, for in that name, in larger sense, may I 
not include all the citizens of the Republic ? 



2 2 Washington and Lincoln 

Shall the Republic continue to stand for honesty and integrity 
and the fear of God among the nations? Shall there be liberty 
wherever the flag flies, or else the withdrawal of the flag? Shall 
we stand eternally for what Washington founded and Lincoln 
preserved? Or shall we do some other thing? That depends 
upon you. 

There come to our harbors every day a horde of people from 
the Old World, following that westward moving star of empire, 
seeking their fortunes in this land of equal opportunity for all, of 
special privilege for none. What shall we do with them? What 
shall be our position with regard to immigration ? How much of 
such an influx can our people assimilate ? What quantity of food 
of that character can the nation digest? How many foreign 
people can we turn into good American citizens without lowering 
our immortal standards? How far shall we shut the open door? 
What restriction shall we place upon our welcome ? That depends 
upon you. 

These are external problems. There are internal ones, perhaps 
of greater moment and harder to solve. Within our borders are 
millions of black people, an alien race whose mental habit and 
temperament differ from ours even as we are physically at vari- 
ance. What shall we do with these people? Believe me, Appo- 
mattox simply changed the form of the question. It settled another 
question, not that one. Emancipation solved one problem only to 
introduce another. That problem confronts us with a constantly 
increasing demand, a demand full of menace, fraught with appall- 
ing possibilities. There appears as yet no solution of it. Educa- 
tion, we fatuously cry, but education is not the universal resolvent. 
We can not educate away the racial difference. The welfare of 
this country depends on the retention of power by the white race. 
White and black in blend make gray, the ruination of the posi- 
tive and valuable in both. How shall this be a white man's 
country with a white man's government and yet a fit home for 
the black man? What are we going to do about this question? 
That depends upon you. From you must come the prophet to 
show us the way. 

The principle of combination is universally accepted in the 
affairs of men. Consolidation, concentration, are the conditions 



A Contrast and a Consequence 23 

of success. How far may this consolidation and concentration 
in the form of capital, on the one hand, and of men on the other, 
be brought about? And when brought about what relation shall 
they sustain to each other? What shall we do with the trusts, 
what shall we do with the unions ? That depends upon you. 

Life without law is impossible. Laws are man's expression 
of his reading of the will of God. Happy is the state in which the 
laws are not only adequate but observed. How shall we check 
the general disregard of law which is so singular a reversion to 
conditions long past when every man was a law unto himself? 
Long ago the right of private war was done away with. There 
is a backward swing of the pendulum of public opinion. Men 
have forgot that vengeance is God's and punishment belongs to 
the state. How shall we reassert effectively our determination 
that the law shall be administered only by those whom we have 
charged with that solemn, that vital duty? 

The daily histories of the times, the newspapers, ring with 
charge and countercharge of political corruption in city, state 
and nation. We would fain believe that much of the hue and 
cry is false, but we know that a terrible proportion of it is true. 
The best blood of the nation is strangely indifferent to the 
demands of the hour. For good government there should be a 
proper blending of Washington and Lincoln, the one represent- 
ing education, culture, refinement, the other the great beating 
heart of the people. It will not do to trust to the low, the ignorant 
and the venal, the issues of life and government. Republics in 
history have tended to become oligarchies. Shall we reverse the 
work of Washington and Lincoln and submit ourselves unresist- 
ing, indifferent, to an oligarchy of bosses ? 

And there are social problems as pressing. The sanctity of 
home life, the holiness of the marriage relation, is everywhere 
invaded. The social unit, the family, is being sundered into dis- 
orderly atoms by the growing evil of divorce. In it we are strik- 
ing at the children. 

There is a growing inclination to excess on the part of the rich 
and the well-to-do which is fatal to national honor, to national 
honesty. Frugality is to a democracy what modesty is to a 
woman. Extravagance is an attribute of empire. The follies of 



24 Washington and Lincoln 

men in high station are vices when they are translated by men of 
less degree. There is a tendency in our midst to become intoxi- 
cated not only with our position in the world, but with our internal 
prosperity. How shall we check it? 

Publicity is the safeguard of a Republic. Concealment is the 
essence of despotism. How, while conserving the freedom of the 
press, shall we also conserve the freedom of the private citizen, 
so that his personal affairs with which the public have no concern 
shall not be exploited and misrepresented by unscrupulous news- 
papers? 

These, gentlemen and comrades, are a few of the things which 
call to the patriotism of to-day. Love of country is usually asso- 
ciated with the bullet and the bayonet. The call of the flag above 
our heads is not merely a summons to war, it is a demand upon 
every citizen at every moment to do his civic duty with the 
same devotion, the same courage, with which he would answer an 
appeal to arms. It takes more resolution, of a higher if of a dif- 
ferent order, to grapple with the questions which I have so briefly 
outlined, than simply to follow a leader or even to lead ourselves 
in the high places of the field. 

In what did Washington's greatness lie ? In what did Lincoln's 
greatness lie? I would not affirm that they were supreme above 
all others in any particular field. Washington, brilliant soldier 
that he was, was not the greatest captain that ever set a squadron. 
Lincoln, profoundly politic and farseeing as he was, was not the 
greatest statesman that ever outlined a policy. Indeed it would 
be hard to point to any one thing in which these two unchallenged 
might claim the palm. 

They were great because in each of them were blended a con- 
geries of qualities which made up a personality, not supernatural 
or superhuman, as many would fain urge, but a personality far 
beyond the common lot ; a personality that was honest, that was 
pure, that was unselfish, that was able, that was devoted to man- 
kind, to the country in which they both served ; a personality 
which chose duty and service for its watchwords. When you 
analyze great men, as a rule you will find that their greatness lies 
in that mysterious thing we call personality, which is made up of, 
and is yet disassociated from, special talents. Many talents go to 



A Contrast and a Consequence 25 

make genius. To be great there must be balance and proportion. 
Without these the most brilHant achievement lacks permanence. 

We cannot all be great statesmen, great soldiers, great admin- 
istrators — what you will, but we may all be great patriots. We 
can each one of us so direct these qualities which God has be- 
stowed upon us as to become a personality whose sole aim and 
end is the betterment of men and the service of the state. It is 
not idle for me to bid you strive to follow the example of Wash- 
ington or of Lincoln. There is no example too high for us to 
struggle to attain, not even the Example of the Cross. 

Like the ancient Roman I do not despair of the Republic. God 
mercifully in the past hath preserved us. Sure His hand hath 
led us through valleys and shadows. He hath sustained us in the 
hour of gloom and defeat. He hath restrained us in the day of 
triumph and success. Humbly am I confident that He will not 
desert us now. He hath more work for us to do. 

But we may not thrust all the burdens of our future upon Him. 
As the work of salvation in the individual is a co-operation between 
God and man, so the work of salvation in a nation is the co-opera- 
tion of the same Power and the people. Let us here consecrate 
ourselves anew to the service of mankind in the spirit of our fore- 
fathers. In Lincoln's spirit : Let us here highly resolve that if we, 
individually or collectively, can bring it about, this government of 
the people and by the people, and for, not merely the United 
States, but all humanity as well, which looks to us as the light of 
liberty throughout the ages, shall not perish from the face of the 
earth. 

And, by the grace of God, and in the name of Washington and 
Lincoln, oh, my countrymen, let us rise in our manhood and seize 
the glorious opportunities which are ours for the taking in this 
country of the free. 



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